Alex will quickly weaken after landfall and head west, across northern Mexico,
but the remnant circulation will still produce tropical downpours along
the track.

Some of the tropical moisture will even push into
southern Arizona, bringing up our monsoon storm chances as we head into
the weekend.

As what's left of Alex moves off land and into the
East Pacific near the entrance to the Gulf of California, the
counter-clockwise circulation around the low will likely initiate a
tropical moisture surge traveling north over the Gulf.

Once this
moisture reaches Arizona, it will spread out and possibly keep our monsoon storm
chances going through July 4th.

After the holiday weekend, some
drier air pushes back into southern Arizona.

However, the storms
don't disappear from the forecast.

They will just be a little
less of them as we head into the short workweek.

June 25, 2010

TUCSON, AZ (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)
- Two prominent climate experts, including one from the University of
Arizona, are calling for a "no-regrets" strategy for planning for a
hotter and drier western North America.

Their advice: use water
conservatively and continue developing ways to harness energy from the
sun, wind and Earth.

Jonathan Overpeck, principal investigator
with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest at the UA, and Bradley
Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of
Colorado, write in the June 25 issue of the journal Science that such
an approach is necessary for coping with a wide range of projected
future climate changes in the West and Southwest.

In their
overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite
published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures,
earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing
precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought,
plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation
mortality and more large wildfires.

"The West, and especially the
Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change – warming, drying,
less late-winter snowpack and drought – as well as the impacts of this
change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric
sciences and co-director of the Institute
of the Environment.

In the past 10 years, temperatures
in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20th
century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a
water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the
researchers said.

Those reductions, combined with the worst
drought observed since 1900, haven't helped matters; water storage in
Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell
nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly
since.

In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects
of climate change. Work by UA's David Breshears and colleagues have
already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have
died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination
of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought.

In
addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack
has decreased.

While researchers are confident that the higher
temperatures and resulting changes in snowpack, Colorado River flow,
vegetation mortality and wildfires are human-caused, they don't know
whether the drought that has plagued the West for the last 10 years –
the worst since record-keeping began – is because of humans, Overpeck
said.

"It's critical to determine the causes of the observed
change, including the drought, because then we will have a much
improved ability to say what's coming next, in the future," Overpeck
said.

To complicate issues, studies published to date suggest
that Colorado River flow could continue to decrease by 20 percent by
2050, with severe implications for cities served by Colorado River
water and for agricultural production.

"One thing is for sure,"
Overpeck said. "The best strategy now – the no-regrets strategy – is to
prepare for a hotter and drier West, Southwest and Arizona, and to
make sure we don't commit water to things now in ways that could make
water shortages in the future more difficult to deal with."

Fortunately,
Overpeck said, scientists have a better understanding about potential
future climate change in western North America than for many other
regions around the globe, making it easier for policy makers to plan
coping strategies.

The researchers also point to the region's
potential wealth of solar, wind and geothermal renewable energy
production.

"That offers a way to make up economically for the
costs that will be incurred in adapting to the warmer, drier
conditions," Overpeck said. "And it will have the side benefit of
decreasing the chances, through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, for
potentially greater human-caused climate change."

June 22, 2010

TUCSON, AZ (THE UNIVERSITY OF
ARIZONA) - It won't be around for very long, but with a pair of
binoculars you can catch Comet McNaught as it nears the sun during the
next few days.

The best place to see it is well away from
city lights with binoculars or telescope for a better the view,
according to University of Arizona senior research scientist Carl
Hergenrother at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The comet, he said, is now in northern Auriga, just a few degrees to
the northeast of the 0th magnitude star Capella.

It is visible
very low in the northeast sky about a half hour before the start of
dawn.

Hergenrother, whose work centers on comets, asteroids,
has been keeping tabs on McNaught, officially C/2009 R1, and writes
about this and other night sky phenomena in his blog.

Comet
McNaught is one of several comets named for its discoverer, Robert
McNaught.

Like other comets, McNaught is essentially a ball of
ice and dust, remnants of the earliest days of the formation of our
solar system.

As they approach the sun, comets develop signature
"tails" as solar winds cause them to shed their dusty outer layers.

McNaught will appear lower and lower in the morning sky in the
Northern Hemisphere as it heads to perihelion, its closest approach to
the sun, on July 2.

Hergenrother said the comet may be visible
low in the evening sky later on, but will be very close to the horizon
and not very visible for most people.

And the window for morning
viewing, he added, is closing rapidly. Still to come, though, is
Hartley 2, which will be bright enough to see with the naked eye come
this fall.

June 18, 2010

(NATIONAL SCIENCE
FOUNDATION) - Increasingly, the Earth's climate appears to be more
connected than anyone would have imagined.

El Niño, the weather
pattern that originates in a patch of the equatorial Pacific, can spawn
heat waves and droughts as far away as Africa.

Now, a research
team led by Brown University has established that the climate in the
tropics over at least the last 2.7 million years changed in lockstep
with the cyclical spread and retreat of ice sheets thousands of miles
away in the Northern Hemisphere.

The findings appear to cement
the link between the recent Ice Ages and temperature changes in tropical
oceans.

Based on that new link, the scientists conclude that
carbon dioxide has played the lead role in dictating global climate
patterns, beginning with the Ice Ages and continuing today.

"We
think we have the simplest explanation for the link between the Ice Ages
and the tropics over that time and the apparent role of carbon dioxide
in the intensification of Ice Ages and corresponding changes in the
tropics," said Timothy Herbert of Brown University and the lead author
of the paper in Science. Herbert added, "but we don't know why.
The answer lies in the ocean, we're pretty sure."

Candace Major
of the National Science Foundation agrees: "This research certainly
supports the idea of global sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide as
the first order of control on global temperature patterns," she says.
"It also points to a strong sensitivity of global temperature to the
levels of greenhouse gases on very long timescales, and shows that
resulting climatic impacts are felt from the tropics to the poles."

The
research team, including scientists from Luther College in Iowa,
Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and the University of Hong Kong,
analyzed cores taken from the seabed at four locations in the tropical
oceans: the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, the eastern Pacific and
the equatorial Atlantic Ocean.

The cores tell the story.

Sedimentary
cores taken from the ocean floor in four locations show that climate
patterns in the tropics have mirrored Ice Age cycles for the last 2.7
million years and that carbon dioxide has played the leading role in
determining global climate patterns.

The researchers zeroed in on
tropical ocean surface temperatures because these vast bodies, which
make up roughly half of the world's oceans, in large measure orchestrate
the amount of water in the atmosphere and thus rainfall patterns
worldwide, as well as the concentration of water vapor, the most
prevalent greenhouse gas.

Looking at the chemical remains of tiny
marine organisms that lived in the sunlit zone of the ocean, the
scientists were able to extract the surface temperature for the oceans
for the last 3.5 million years, well before the beginning of the Ice
Ages.

Beginning about 2.7 million years ago, the geologists found
that tropical ocean surface temperatures dropped by 1 to 3 degrees C
(1.8 to 5.4 F) during each Ice Age, when ice sheets spread in the
Northern Hemisphere and significantly cooled oceans in the northern
latitudes.

Even more compelling, the tropics also changed when
Ice Age cycles switched from roughly 41,000-year to 100,000-year
intervals.

"The tropics are reproducing this pattern both in the
cooling that accompanies the glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere and
the timing of those changes," Herbert said. "The biggest surprise to us
was how similar the patterns looked all across the tropics since about
2.7 million years ago. We didn't expect such similarity."

Climate
scientists have a record of carbon dioxide levels for the last 800,000
years--spanning the last seven Ice Ages--from ice cores taken in
Antarctica.

They have deduced that carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere fell by about 30 percent during each cycle, and that most of
that carbon dioxide was absorbed by high-latitude oceans such as the
North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean.

According to the new
findings, this pattern began 2.7 million years ago, and the amount of
atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans has intensified with
each successive Ice Age.

Geologists know the Ice Ages have gotten
progressively colder--leading to larger ice sheets--because they have
found debris on the seabed of the North Atlantic and North Pacific left
by icebergs that broke from the land-bound sheets.

"It seems
likely that changes in carbon dioxide were the most important reason why
tropical temperatures changed, along with the water vapor feedback,"
Herbert said.

Herbert acknowledges that the team's findings leave
important questions.

One is why carbon dioxide began to play a
major role when the Ice Ages began 2.7 million years ago.

Also
left unanswered is why carbon dioxide appears to have magnified the
intensity of successive Ice Ages from the beginning of the cycles to the
present.

The researchers do not understand why the timing of the
Ice Age cycles shifted from roughly 41,000-year to 100,000-year
intervals.

(Copyright 2010 by the National Science Foundation.
All Rights Reserved.)

June 16, 2010

TUCSON, AZ (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA)
- The next generation of adaptive optics has arrived at the Large
Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham, northeast of Tucson.

This new
technology provides astronomers with a new level of image sharpness
never before seen.

Developed in a collaboration between Italy's
Arcetri Observatory of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, or INAF,
and the University of Arizona's Steward
Observatory, this technology represents a remarkable step
forward for astronomy.

"This is an incredibly exciting time as
this new adaptive optics system allows us to achieve our potential as
the world's most powerful optical telescope," said Richard Green,
director of the LBT. "The successful results show that the next
generation of astronomy has arrived, while providing a glimpse of the
awesome potential the LBT will be capable of for years to come."

Until
relatively recently, ground-based telescopes had to live with
wavefront distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere that significantly
blurred the images of distant objects (this is why stars appear to
twinkle to the human eye).

While there have been advancements in
adaptive optics technology to correct atmospheric blurring, the LBT's
innovative system takes this concept to a new level.

This success
was achieved through the combination of several innovative
technologies.

The first is the secondary mirror, which was
designed from the start to be a main component of the LBT rather than an
additional element as on other telescopes.

The concave
secondary mirror is .91 meters in diameter (3 feet) and only 1.6
millimeters thick.

The mirror is so thin and pliable that it can
easily be manipulated by actuators pushing on 672 tiny magnets glued to
the back of the mirror, which offers far greater flexibility and
accuracy than previous systems on other telescopes.

An
innovative "pyramid" sensor detects atmospheric distortions and
manipulates the mirror in real time to cancel out the blurring,
allowing the telescope to literally see as clear as if there were no
atmosphere.

Incredibly, the mirror is capable of making
adjustments every one thousandth of a second, with accuracy to better
than 10 nanometers (a nanometer is one millionth the size of a
millimeter).

In closed-dome tests beginning May 12 and sky tests
every night since May 25, astronomer Simone Esposito and his INAF team
tested the new device, achieving exceptional results.

The LBT's
adaptive optics system, called the First Light Adaptive Optics system,
or FLAO, immediately outperformed all other comparable systems,
delivering an image quality greater than three times sharper than the
Hubble Space Telescope using just one of the LBT's two 8.4 meter
mirrors.

When the adaptive optics are in place for both mirrors
and their light is combined appropriately, it is expected that the LBT
will achieve image sharpness 10 times that of the Hubble.

Setting
a New Standard for Optical Astronomy

The index of the
perfection of image quality is known as the Strehl Ratio, with a ratio
of 100 percent equivalent to an absolutely perfect image.

Without
adaptive optics, the ratio for ground-based telescopes is less than 1
percent.

The adaptive optics systems on other major telescopes
today improve image quality up to about 30 percent to 50 percent in the
near-infrared wavelengths where the testing was conducted.

In
the initial testing phase, the LBT's adaptive optics system has been
able to achieve unprecedented Strehl Ratio of 60 to 80 percent, a
nearly two-thirds improvement in image sharpness over other existing
systems.

The results exceeded all expectations and were so
precise the testing team had difficulty believing its findings.

However,
testing has continued since the system was first put on the sky on May
25, and the LBT's adaptive optics have functioned flawlessly and
achieved peak Strehl Ratios of 82 to 84 percent.

"The results on
the first night were so extraordinary that we thought it might be a
fluke, but every night since the adaptive optics have continued to
exceed all expectations. These results were achieved using only one of
LBT's mirrors. Imagine the potential when we have adaptive optics on
both of LBT's giant eyes," Esposito said.

Development of the LBT's adaptive
optics system took longer than a decade through an international
collaboration.

INAF, in particular the Arcetri Observatory,
conceived the instrument design and developed the electro-mechanical
system, while the University of Arizona Mirror Lab created the optical
elements, and the Italian companies Microgate and ADS International
engineered several components.

A prototype system was previously
installed on the Multiple Mirror Telescope, or MMT, at Mt. Hopkins,
Ariz.

The MMT system uses roughly half the number of actuators
as the LBT's final version, but it demonstrated the viability of the
design.

The LBT's infrared test camera, which produced the
accompanying images, was a joint development of INAF in Bologna and the
MPIA in Heidelberg.

"This has been a tremendous success for
INAF and all of the partners in the LBT," said Piero Salinari, research
director at the Arcetri Observatory, INAF. "After more than a decade
and with so much care and effort having gone into this project, it is
really rewarding to see it succeed so astoundingly."

More on
LBT

The $120 million LBT on Mount Graham utilizes two giant
8.4 meter mirrors and with the new adaptive optics the telescope will
have the resolution of a 22.8-meter, or approximately 75-foot
telescope.

The new adaptive optics will enable versatile
instruments such as the near-infrared camera spectrometer, which allows
astronomers to penetrate interstellar dust clouds and reveal the
secrets of the youngest and most distant galaxies, to achieve their
full potential on the LBT.

The LBT is an international
collaboration among institutions in the U.S., Italy and Germany. The
LBT Corporation partners are:

"It is a great exhibition for teachers to see, because educators
have the amazing opportunity to enlighten, inform and inspire students
to learn more about their bodies," said Cheryl Mure, Vice President of
Education for Premier Exhibitions, Inc. "Teachers can take back what
they have learned and share it with their students, including the risks
associated with overeating and smoking."

Teachers will receive
an up-close look inside the skeletal, muscular, reproductive,
respiratory, circulatory and other systems of the human body.

The
specimens are meticulously dissected and preserved through an
innovative process, giving teachers and students the opportunity to
view the complexity of their own organs and systems like never
before.

Many of the whole-body specimens are dissected in
athletic poses, allowing guests to relate to everyday activities.

A
healthy lung is featured next to a black lung ravaged by smoking in a
vivid comparison more powerful than any textbook image.

For
complimentary admission, teachers will be asked to show a school or
district identification card at the Box Office.

Additional
guests may purchase tickets at the box office, online or by phone
at 888.263.4379.

Free downloadable teachers' guides
correlated to Arizona academic standards are also available for
reference.

The guides are divided into different educational
levels from kindergarten up to post-secondary, and feature activity and
resource ideas.

June 07, 2010

At
Desert Diamond Casino on Nogales Highway join local agencies to discuss
monsoon safety from 10 AM to 2 PM.

The National Weather
Service, Pima County Regional Flood Control District, local fire
departments and emergency management agencies, along with the American
Red Cross and even Vaisala, Inc., local experts in lightning, will be on
hand to answer questions and address concerns.

Just by
stopping by, you could win a brand new rain gauge.

If you win or
already have a rain gauge in your backyard, report rain totals to RainLog.org.

Bring the kids because outside the casino rescue equipment and
trucks will be on display.

June 04, 2010

TUCSON, AZ
(KOLD) - Bodies: The
Exhibition will offer $1 admission for the first 100 people on the
first 100 degree day in June.

The first 100 people to visit
Bodies: The Exhibition within 24 hours of the first 100 degree day in
June in Tucson (as designated by the National Weather Service), receives
admission for only a dollar at the Bodies Box Office. Simply mention
the password HOT at the box office.

Regular Adult Admission is
$22.

Today could be the first 100 degree day in June, but just
barely. If we don't hit 100 today, we will definitely hit it on
Saturday with a forecast high of 104 degrees.

Track the
temperature on our homepage at KOLD.com.
The current temperature is on the upper right.

Bodies:
The Exhibition is at the Rialto Theatre in downtown Tucson. It's open
Sunday through Thursday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.
– 10 p.m.

June 03, 2010

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND (ASSOCIATED PRESS) – Some
South Pacific coral atolls have held their own or even grown
in size over the past 60 years despite rising sea levels, research
showed Thursday.

Some scientists worry that many of the tiny,
low-lying islands throughout the South Pacific will eventually disappear
under rising sea levels.

But two researchers who measured 27
islands where local sea levels have risen 4.8 inches (120 millimeters) —
an average of 0.08 inch (2 millimeters) a year — over the past 60
years, found just four had diminished in size.

The reason: Coral islands respond to changes in weather
patterns and climate, with coral debris eroded from encircling reefs
pushed up onto the islands' coasts by winds and waves.

Professor
Paul Kench of Auckland University's environment school and coastal
process expert Arthur Webb of the Fiji-based South Pacific Applied
Geoscience Commission, used historical aerial photographs and
high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land area of
the islands.

While four had gotten smaller, the other 23 had
either stayed the same or grown bigger, according to the research
published in the scientific journal Global and Planetary Change.

The
shape-shifting islands changed their size through what the pair
describe as ocean shoreline displacement toward their lagoons, lagoon
shoreline growth or extensions to the ends of elongated islands.

Kench
said it had been assumed that islands would "sit there and drown" as
sea levels rise. But as the sea rises, the islands respond.

"They're
not all growing, they're changing. They've always changed ... but the
consistency (with which) some of them have grown is a little
surprising," he told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Tuvalu, a
coral island group that climate change campaigners
have repeatedly predicted will be drowned by rising seas, has its
highest point just 14 feet (4.5 meters) above sea level. The
researchers found seven of its nine islands had grown by more than 3
percent on average over the past 60 years.

In 1972, Cyclone Bebe
dumped 346 acres (140 hectares) of sediment on the eastern reef of
Tuvalu, increasing the area of Funafuti, the main island, by 10 percent. Another island,
Funamanu, gained 1.1 acres (0.44 hectares) or nearly 30 percent of its
previous area.

A similar trend was found in Kiribati, where three
main islands also "grew." Betio expanded by 30
percent (89 acres or 36 hectares), Bairiki by 16.3 percent (14 acres or
5.8 hectares), and Nanikai by 12.5 percent (2 acres, or 0.8 hectares).

On World Environment Day in 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong warned parts of
his island nation were already being submerged, forcing some of
Kiribati's 94,000 people living in shoreline village communities to be
relocated from century-old sites.

Worst case scenarios showed
Kiribati would disappear into the sea within a century, he said at the
time.

But Kench said the study shows the islands are coping with
sea-level change, with higher waves and water depth supplying sand and
gravel from coral reefs.

"In other words, they (the
islands) are slowly moving ... migrating across their reef platforms,"
he said. "As the sea-level conditions and wave conditions are changing,
the islands are adjusting to that."

But he warned an
accelerated rate of sea-level rise could be "the critical environmental
threat to the small island nations," with "a very rapid rate of island
destruction" possible from a water depth beyond a certain threshold. That
threshold is unknown.

Australian sea level oceanographer John
Hunter said the findings "are good news and not a surprise."

"Coral
islands can keep up with some sea-level rise, but (there's also) ocean
warming ... and ocean acidification ... that are certainly problematic
for the corals. Sea-level rise can actually make the islands grow — as
it apparently is doing," said Hunter, who did not participate in the
study.

While coral might adjust to ocean warming, ocean
acidification "will probably be the death knell of the coral reefs,"
leaving coastal management by humans as the only way of retaining and
rebuilding atolls, said Hunter, a researcher at the University of
Tasmania's Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research
Center.

Commenting on the findings, New Scientist magazine noted,
"Erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of
physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline, as erosion may be
balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines."